“COLORADO ODDities”

Thanks, Kat. Have you found the whole song yet. It would be great to get it posted here.

As it happens, I'm in the process of reading T.J. Stiles’ excellent and carefully researched book Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. He puts the James brothers and their family in the socio-political context normally omitted or glossed over by poets and others who would turn Jesse James into a hero.

James’ family were slave owners and secessionists in an area of Missouri known as “Little Dixie.” Jesse's Civil War service consisted of being a bushwhacker in Bloody Bill Anderson's gang of guerrillas. They were all bloody terrorists preying on any of their neighbors who supported the Union even though they may also have supported slavery. Their victims weren't shot in battle. Rather the bushwhackers would lure them out of their homes and shoot them as they ran. Their boddies would be mutilated and their scalps taken as trophies to hang from the bridles of these savage bastards.

Growing up on the Jesse James ballad, it's easy to think of Robert Ford as a coward and traitor—and he probably was—but Stiles makes it pretty clear that he did the world a pretty big favor by shooting Jesse James. James’ supporters—and there were many—were all die-hard secessionists bent on driving abolitionists and Union sympathizers out of Missouri or butchering them where they stood.

Stiles carefully documents his case that James “outlaw” career was actually just a continuation of his bushwhacking days and was entirely pollitically motivated. He wasn't actually a bandit, per se, but remained a terrorist in the cause of slavery and the Confederate States.

Robert Ford, on the other hand, demonstrated his committment to social improvement by operating a bar and a brothel. <g>

      - Mark